After trying to describe my understanding of the PD process and reconcile it with what you wrote, it occurs to me that maybe I should just let things lie, and be happy that most of the editing/producing/burning/playing process is working for me. But let me give it one try, setting forth my understanding of what goes on, and what has occurred with my attemps so far. Remember - burning to disc works just fine. It's burning to the computer's HD which doesn't allow me to achieve playable videos, except in limited circumstances:
When I
produce a video on PD, it doesn't burn anything at all. The act of "Producing" (rendering) doesn't even save anything,
except to the extent that PD does temporary saves as work progresses. It just creates a file type the name of which I can't see and which has the white logo with a musical notation in its center, like an audio file might. That file does not play, but it can be saved with a project name and imported back into PD for further work, just as you wrote. Also, that file can be worked on in PD's "Create Disk" module.
If, after "producing" the file in a format such as AVI, MEPG-4, I go on to PD's "Create Disk" module, then click on "Burn in 2D" and then (in the resulting menu) click "Create a folder" (and create the folder) and click "Start Burning" - that's where I can create a file on the computer's HD which can be played by the computer or on the TV if I burn it to disk.
However, the process outlined in the paragraph above doesn't always result in a file which can be played by most software players. That is, not all formats can be read if the file is burned to the computer's HD. I asked about this in a thread to the forum last week, but only one person responded and basically he said he didn't know how to burn files to the HD in a format which would play on the PC. Frustrated, I did my usual blind banging of my head against the wall, trying different ways to "produce" and burn tothe computer's HD, until I found today that
if saved to the computer's HD only WMV and MEPG-2 files are played by WMV12 or Easy Media Player. AVI, MEPG-4, AVC, and MOV are not read by any of the several software media players I tried - except for Nero Show Time, which reads them all with no difficulty at all. If I burn to any of those formats (MPEG-4 etc) the resulting file on the computer's HD is not MPEG-4 etc, but BUP or MOV.
The other thing which surprised me was that none of the video formats (WMV, AVI, MPEG-4 etc) were saved with the same format name. The playable parts of the WMV and MPEG-2 formats always appear in a folder which PD automatically names "My Video". When I open that folder I see that its contents are divided into 4, sometimes 5, parts. If the original format was WMV or MPEG-2 , I can click on an ideogram labelled "Video_TS" or "VTS_..." and that will play.
Of course the whole process is much more straightforward if I burn to disc, and most of the software media players I tried will play those video files without difficulty. They also play on the Sony BD player which is plugged in to the TV.
Bill
Bill Hansen